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Dancer is still going strong

Vancouver dancer and instructor Beverley Matson Roberts is in Vernon this month.

— image credit: Photo submitted

by
Staff Writer - Vernon Morning Star

posted Jul 11, 2012 at 1:00 AM

She’s gone from dancing with some of the top ballet companies to tripping the light fantastic on the dance floor like some of her heroes.

Beverley Matson Roberts still finds the time to travel the world to share her love of dance, and she is coming to Vernon to visit family and also share her expertise with both dancers and instructors.

“Dancing is always changing. Fads come and go, but knowing a large vocabulary of basic dance steps in diverse forms of dance will soar you to the top in both stage and competition,” said Roberts, who in the past two years has left her home base in Vancouver and has travelled to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and Paris.

Roberts has 50 years of dance history behind her, starting with ballet in the Russian technique, then on to the Cecchetti method and exams, and ending with learning the Royal Ballet exams.

She has been a ballet adjudicator in Vancouver for many in-studio exams.

After dancing as a soloist for New York Ballet (Ballanchine) and San Francisco Opera Ballet (Nico Charisse) in the early 1960s, Roberts settled into teaching and began expanding her dance repertoire to include jazz, tap, clogging, Riverdance, and many folk dances, including Spanish.

She has also performed as a dancer in movies and TV and on such stages as the Hollywood Bowl during her career.

Her prowess in the dancing field has opened up many opportunities to choreograph for TV, stage and screen.

Roberts says she is amazed that she can still invoke a standing ovation for her stage performances.

“I credit it to the fact that many of the dance steps used in great musicals of the past have been lost in this generation. Teachers have started teaching at a very young age, before amassing a large, diverse dance repertoire. Audiences remember such talented dancers on the screen as Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Cid Charisse, Ann Miller not to mention all the others. This was my era. I know the steps,” she said.

Roberts is in Vernon for the next three weeks (July 9 to 23) visiting her daughter and son-in-law, Eli and Adrian Knox-Wilson, and is willing to be available to the teachers and dancers to share her expertise with them at their request. She will then return to Vancouver for prior booked appointments.

For more information or to set up a lesson while Roberts is in town, phone 250-545-8270 or e-mail kw3061@telus.net.

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